


Kairos

by orphan_account



Category: Batman (Comics), Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Arkham Asylum, Blood and Gore, F/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Out of Character, Psychological Drama, Romance, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-09 05:37:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7788778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was a man she believed she could cure, and was willing to work her very hardest to do so. She was the first person to treat him like a human being there at Arkham Asylum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Internship

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write this for a few weeks now and I just warn you all ahead of time that this is going to be completely OOC. In no way whatsoever do I want to attempt (and probably fail) at Joker's character, let alone Harely's. I'm writing this for me, because I want to, and you don't have to like that because I honestly won't care. But if you're still reading this, I hope you enjoy.

**Kairos; "Opportunity"**

* * *

 

Arkham Asylum wasn’t where Harleen Quinzel had envisioned herself to be working at after college. Her dreams had been of somewhere more happier and quainter, not the dark, haunted, and Gothic Victorian building that Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane was. Standing just outside the gates of the hell hole, Harleen was conflicted between quitting the internship she hadn’t even started yet and putting on her big girl panties to deal with it.

“I didn’t waste four years of college just to turn this down,” was her mini pep talk as she straightened her peacoat and walked up to the man guarding the gate. She pulled her brand new badge out from her purse, showing it to the guard before he briefly looked her over with curious eyes and nodded his head, opening the gates for her.

The air was eerily quiet, nothing to be heard but distant city traffic jams and the sound of her black heels clicking against the pavement just as she approached the main entrance of the building. The darkened lighting of the atmosphere hinted at an on-coming storm, the lanterns glowing dimly on each side of the large double doors.

Harleen sucked in a breath and opened the doors.

The entry hall was just as she had expected with tall walls, gates, and a front desk where a woman sat at looking busied with something on the computer in front of her. Harleen untied the belt of her coat, opening it to reveal a malnourished torso fitted with a red blouse tucked in a black pencil skirt. She walked up to the woman behind the thick glass and cleared her throat in the direction of a little section of holes for conversation.

The woman didn’t look up.

“Excuse me,” Harleen said with a bit of her Brooklyn accent.

The woman finally looked up, giving Harleen a bored look. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m the new intern, Harleen Qu-” Harleen had started, getting cut off by the woman holding up a finger to motion for Harleen to wait.

The woman picked up a phone near her and murmured into it before putting it back down on the jack and looking back up at Harleen.

“Doctor Stephens will be waiting for you on the other side of the gates,” said the woman, who moved her hand to push a button.

A loud, angry buzz rung in Harleen’s ears followed by the sound of the gates screeching open, allowing Harleen to pass by guards standing around, looking bored and annoyed more than anything. A few eyes wondered over to her, maybe for her beauty or maybe for curiosity in general.

Or maybe because a blonde hair, blue-eyed beauty like Harleen most certainly did not belong in a place like Arkham.

* * *

 

Doctor Stephens was a short, oval man with gray hair, receding hair line, and a face in which permanently held an expression that could kill. At first Harleen had been worried he wouldn’t be very friendly, but his smile, warm handshake, and gentle voice proved her otherwise. He showed her around Arkham, giving her a brief first tour before introducing her to her very first crisp white coat she was to wear at all times there at the asylum. After she put it on, she fashioned her badge to the pocket at her left breast, smoothing down to the collar of the coat as if it would calm down her nerves.

“We’re rather surprised they sent you to us. We haven’t had a new psychologist in years. I mean, it was about time we had a fresh face around here but, honestly, of all places,” said Dr. Stephens with a comforting chuckle after he had showed Harleen to the staff lounge. She would meet the other doctors next and after that, a walk through the main floor holding the patients of Arkham.

“Trust me, I’m just as shocked as you are,” said Harleen as she messed with her black framed glasses, a nervous tick.

“I know the place seems rough, but give it a few months. It’ll grow on you, I promise.”

* * *

Half a month had gone by since Harleen had started her internship at Arkham. While she had made fast friends with some of her co-workers, including Dr. Stephens himself and his wife Martha, she had been given her first patient whom she had gotten the chance to interview and talk with a full week and a half before he was to serve his death sentence.

Harleen was to be given a new patient that day and for some reason, a nervous knot tugged in her stomach. She was standing near Stephens’ office when she eyed a box filled with a few thick files.

“What are those?” she asked Dr. Jixon beside her.

Jixon followed Harleen’s gaze and sighed. “The box of files belonging to the patients that the doctors here refuse to take.

Harleen raised her eyebrows. “Ya mean to tell me that there are patients here that go untreated, that don’t get their sessions like everyone else?”

Jixon shrugged. “Stephens does what he can, since it’s his duty. If the director were to find out that we neglected some patients entirely, all hell would break loose.”

Courage bloomed in Harleen’s chest. “I’m going to volunteer and take one.”

Jixon’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”

Harleen walked over to the box and pulled out the first file she could access, pulling it out just as Stephens came out of his office with an arm full of files.

"Alright ladies, Maxon is sick so you guys get first dibs on the new patients.” He looked up at Jixon first before he looked over at Harleen. “What do you have there?” he asked, curious.

Harleen waved the file, which was aged slightly and as thick as a book. “I want to volunteer and take one of the unwanted cases,” she announced.

Stephens’ face formed an impressed expression. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Who did you choose?”

Harleen looked down at the file and opened it.

“The Joker.”


	2. The Clown Prince of Crime Himself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was in a quick hurry and there might be some mistakes until I can get back from work and correct them. I apologize ahead of time. Enjoy!

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Dr. Quinzel,” started Jixon, blocking the door that lead into the therapy session room.

Harleen rather have called it the “interrogation” room for its lack of comfort and furnishing. Only a table with two chairs sat inside of it. Right now, all that separated Harleen from the room was a one-way mirror wall, a door, and Jixon.

Harleen looked to the side at the one-way mirror wall and into the room. From the opposite doorway that lead to the patient’s quarters was where there would be security officers standing nearby that would be at her beck and call should the Joker reach across the table and attempt to kill Harleen.

She didn’t get a good look at him. She would save that for when they were finally face-to-face. But pretending she had, she turned back to Jixon with an unfazed look.

“I want to,” she said rather sternly to Jixon. She wanted him out of her way and for a moment, her eyes darkened with annoyance as she glared up at Jixon.

Jixon let out a sigh and hesitated.

“Now, please move. I have a patient to see.”

Jixon finally moved aside and let Harleen in.

The room was quiet as Harleen walked in, her red heels echoing in the scarce room. She held tight to her file and her notebook, nervously fumbling with the cap on her pen as she approached the table and the Joker.

She sat down, arranged her papers out before her on the table, while aware that the Clown Prince of Crime himself watched her while his hands were cuffed behind his back. He was originally supposed to be in a stray jacket, but Harleen had to talk Stephens into at least letting him be in hand cuffs. Of course she had hoped his hands would be comfortably before him.

She understood they had to take their precautions, but sometimes it was absolutely barbarous in Harleen’s eyes.

“My name is Dr. Harleen Quinzel and I will be your new therapist, Mr Joker,” Harleen said, careful to keep her voice steady as she raised her eyes to meet with the Joker’s.

Harleen watched the Joker’s smile widen to show his pearl-white set of teeth. Harleen had never come face-to-face with a gangster before, which made her all the more nervous. She had read about him in Gotham’s papers and had even seen his interviews whenever he got caught on the news. He was Gotham’s most dangerous gangster of all time.

“I haven’t heard a Brooklyn accent like that in ages,” said the Joker as he slowly tilted his head to the side, as if he were hypnotic. “Please, call me Mr. J.”

Harleen stared at him for a moment, raising her eyebrows as she wrote something down in her notebook quickly before speaking further.

“Alright, Mr. J. Why don’t we cut the crap and talk about why we’re both here today,” she started as she wrote done a few more things before raising her eyes to meet his again. He never took his eyes off of her.

“I’m here to help you. I _want_ to help you. And you’re here because you need my help.”

The Joker flashed his pearl smile again and let out a low, creaky laugh. “Oh, I need a lot more than help, baby.” His voice was rough, low, and judging by how he ranged the tone of his words, he was just as unstable as she had heard him to be.

Ignoring his comment, Harleen looked through his file briefly, as if searching for something to talk about, even though she already knew what. “Mr. J. I was thinking we could maybe start with your childhood. I’d like to get inside of your mind.”

The Joker’s wide smile remained as Harleen eyed his bright green, mischievous eyes and his wild matching green hair. His skin was so pale that Harleen felt it to be an unnatural color – so white, it reminded her of bleach. Sitting before Harleen, he wore an old, dirty light purple button down with the top few buttons undone to show his defined collarbone. He was missing the dark evergreen waistcoat he always wore on the news.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” said the Joker slowly, his smile changing in the slightest that Harleen had noticed. Before it was a patronizing kind of smile, now it was something dark and sinister, as if he had a plan up his sleeve, literally.

Harleen wrote something down in her notebook before she closed it along with his file. She would need to do further research on him before she’d see him next.

“I’m afraid we’re out of time, Mr. J,” said Harleen as she raised to her feet.

The Joker’s smile faded as he got up next. He was taller than Harleen almost by a full foot. He was intimidating to the max. Lean, fit, and muscular. If his hands were freed right now, he could snap Harleen’s neck like a twig. He wanted to, no doubt.

Harleen rounded the table and walked closed to him, outstretching a hand so that nobody in any of the one-way mirrors could see her hand. “I suggest you let me take that knife, Mr. Joker,” she whispered to him with a triumphed smile.

The Joker glared down at her over his nose before smiling sinisterly again. “Go right ahead, baby.”

Unfazed, Harleen daringly dug her hand into the Joker’s left pocket, fishing out a butter knife sharpened. She didn’t know how he came to be in possession of it.

“You’re luck you have me as your therapist, Mr. Joker. This could get you in solitary confinement for a whole week. But I’ll make this your first warning. Three warnings and I’ll become a tattle-tale you don’t even know I can be.”

She buried the knife in the pocket of her lab coat and took a step back just as the door behind them opened and security guards came in to take the Joker away for dinner.

“It’s Mr. J. Remember?” The Joker asked as he smiled sinisterly until they turned him away from her.

Harleen watched them take him away, refusing to let out her shaky breath until the door shut behind him.


End file.
